科普科研类（Passage 89～94）
Passage 89 题材：科普科研类字数：484 建议用时：6.5分钟
“Mirror Wor ld s” is only one of David Gelernter's big ideas. Another is “lifestreams”—in essence,vast electronic diaries. “Every document you create and every document other people send you is stored in your lifestream,” he wrote in the mid-1990s together with Eric Freeman, who produced a doctoral thesis on the topic. Putting electronic documents in chronological order, they said, would make it easier for people to manage all their digital output and experiences.
Lifestreams have not yet replaced the desktop on personal computers, as Mr. Gelernter had hoped. Indeed, a software start-up to implement the idea folded in 2004. But today something quite similar can be found all over the web in many different forms. Blogs are essentially electronic diaries. Personal newsfeeds are at the heart of Facebook and other social networks. A torrent of short text messages appears on Twitter.
Certain individuals are going even further than Mr. Gelernter expected. Some are digitizing their entire office, including pictures, bills and correspondence. Others record their whole life. Gordon Bell, a researcher at Microsoft, puts everything he has accumulated, written, photographed and presented in his “local cyberspace”. Yet others “log” every aspect of their lives with wea rable cameras.
The latest trend is “life-tracking”. Practitioners keep meticulous digital records of things they do: how much coffee they drink, how much work they do
each day, what books they are reading, and so on. Much of this is done manually by putting the data into a PC or, increasingly, a smartphone. But people are also using sensors, mainly to keep track of their vital signs, for instance to see how well they sleep or how fast they run.
The first self-trackers were mostly geeks fascinated by numbers. But the more recent converts simply want to learn more about themselves, says Gary Wolf, a technology writer and co-founder of a blog called “The Quantified Self”. They want to use technology to help them identify factors that make them depressed, keep them from sleeping or affect their cognitive performance. One self-tracker learned, for instance, that eating a lot of butter allowed him to solve arithmetic problems faster.
A market for self-tracking devices is already emerging. Fitbit and Greengoose, two start-ups, are selling wireless accelerometers that can track a user's physical activity. Zeo, another start-up, has developed an alarm clock that comes with a headband to measure people's brainwave activity at night and chart their sleep on the web.
As people create more such self-tracking data, firms will start to mine them and offer services based on the result. Xobni, for example, analyses people's inboxes （” xobni” spelled backwards）to help them manage their e-mail and contacts. It lists them according to the intensity of the electronic relationship rather than in alphabetical order. Users are sometimes surprised by the results, says Jeff Bonforte, the firm's boss: “They think it's creepy when we list other people before their
girlfriend or wife.”
1. Which of the following statements is TRUE of electronic documents?
A. They are open to the individual's friends.
B. The types of documents are limited.
C. They can be put in various websites.
D. They are mainly presented in pictures.
2. As to life-tracking, the author has given the following examples EXCEPT _________.
A. the tool
B. the purpose
C. the method
D. the individual
3. We can infer from the passage that ________.
A. many men tend to alienate from their girlfriends or wives deliberately
B. in some aspects, men have closer relationship with others than their wives
C. self-tracking devices and data might bring trouble to many families
D. people may take advantage of self-tracking data to fulfill their dreams
4. The best title of the passage is ________.
A. Tracking Your Life on the Web
B. Recording Electronic Documents
C. Life-tracking Devices
D. A New Technology
5. What does t he word “folded” in Paragraph Two probably mean?
「文章大意」
本文介绍在网络上记录生活的情况。开篇由David Gelernter的想法引出电子文件。随后第二段介绍现在电子文件的发展情况。第三段继续说明人们如何将生活中的方方面面在网络上记录下来。第四段引入life-tracking这一概念，解释了人们如何追踪生活。第五段谈及现在人们进行生活追踪的目的，接着举例说明生活追踪器的开发情况。末段解释针对生活追踪更多的市场开发情况。
答案详解
1.C 细节题。原文第二段的第三句话指出：“But today something quite similar can be
found all over the web in many different forms.”，并接着举例说明了Blogs，Facebook，Twitter等不同网站的情况，可见只有C选项符合原文内容，故为本题答案。
2.D 细节题。根据题干中的关键词life-tracking定位至原文的第四段。该段的第一句话说
到：“The latest trend is ‘life-tracking’.”接着就分别举例说明了进行生活追踪的目的、方法以及工具，但是并没有举例说明这些专门进行生活追踪的人都是什么人，故本题的答案为D。
3.B 推断题。根据原文最后一段的最后两句话：“…They think it's creep y when we list
other people before their girlfriend or wife.”可推知，如果按照电子往来的频繁程度来排名的话，排在第一位的通常不会是妻子或女友。可见只有B选项符合原文内容，故为本题答案。
4.A 主旨题。根据全文内容可知，全文围绕的主旨是由electronic documents这个大的
概念引入的life-tracking：本文由David Gelernter的Lifestreams设想引出电子文件的发展情况，并说明了人们如何将生活中的方方面面在网络上记录下来，接着引入life-tracking这一概念，解释了进行生活追踪的方法和现在进行生活追踪的目的，然后又举例说明了生活追踪器的开发情况。最后还解释了针对生活追踪更多相关的市场开发情况。可见，A选项是对life-tracking的展开，最能概括本文主旨，故为本题答案。
5. Failed.
语义题。根据题干定位至原文的第二段。原文的第一段提出了David Gelemter的设想，接着第二段的第一句话就指出了结果：“Lifestreams have not yet replaced the deskt op on personal computers, as Mr. Gelernter had hoped.”并接着对该句做了进一步解释，然后作者话锋一转，提到：But today something quite similar can be found all over the web in many different forms.说明现在网络上出现的许多类似软件。由该句中的But today可推知，2004年的那款软件并不成功。
「词汇装备」
chronological] adj. 按年代顺序排列的cyberspace n. 电脑空间
geek n. 做低级滑稽表演的人
arithmetic n. 算术；算法
creepy adj. 爬行的；匍匐的；皮肤上有足爬似的
output n. 产量；输出；输出量
wearable adj. 可穿用的；可佩带的；耐磨的n. 衣服
convert n. 皈依者v. 使转变
alphabetical adj. 依字母顺序的；字母的
Passage 90 题材：科普科研类字数：465 建议用时：6分钟
The 21st century ushered in what was supposed to be paperless living. The data of our lives was to be recorded in digital clouds. We were told to click the option for paperless statements, unsubscribe to unwanted catalogues and keep a shredder （碎纸机）nearby at all times.
So how are we doing? “We have a bigger need for paper management thanbefore because we have more access to information than ever before,” says Chris Plantan, creative director for Russell & Hazel, maker of stylish office accessories. Plantan says there are lots of files and lots of piles out there.
For many, organizing papers is another chore that inspires delay. You don’t need to be a regular viewe r of the A&E cable program “Hoarders” to know that many of us hide our papers in shopping bags instead of filing cabinets. Filing doesn’t make it onto the to-do lists of many over-scheduled people these days.
“It ranks at the bottom of the list, along with having a tooth pulled,” says Melissa Sorensen, a professional organizer based in Woodbridge. She says paper management is one of her toughest assignments.”People are restricted by fear, worried about what will happen if they throw something out,” Sorensen says.”Eighty-five percent of the things you file, you never retrieve again.”
Those who do have files often suffer from another issue: figuring out where
英语四级阅读理解练习附答案 导读：我根据大家的需要整理了一份关于《英语四级阅读理解练习附答案》的内容，具体内容：下面是我整理的，希望对大家有帮助。Culture is one of the most challenging elements of the international ma... 下面是我整理的，希望对大家有帮助。 Culture is one of the most challenging elements of the international marketplace. 『This system of learned behavior patterns characteristic of the members of a given society is constantly shaped by a set of dynamic variables: language, religion, values and attitudes, manners and customs, aesthetics, technology, education, and social institutions.』① To cope with this system, an international manager needs both factual and interpretive knowledge of culture. To some extent, the factual knowledge can be learned; its interpretation comes only through experience. The most complicated problems in dealing with the cultural environment stem from the fact that one cannot learn culture—one has to live it. Two schools of thought exist in the business world on how to deal with cultural diversity. One is that business is business the world around, following the model of Pepsi and McDonalds. In some cases, globalization is a fact of life; however, cultural differences are still far from converging.
洛基英语，中国在线英语教育领导品牌 综合题，请根据题目给出的内容，来回答下面给出的试题。An unidentified wit once said, "laugh, and the world laughs with you. Snore, and you sleep alone." Yet snoring is far from a laughing matter, as those unfortunates with good hearing, who are rightly subjected to the sounds of the snoring disorder, will testify. It has been estimated that one of eight Americans snores; this means that there are approximately 21 million people --- women as well as men - who render an unpleasant sound when they are asleep. And assuming that each snorer disturbs the sleep of at least one other person, it necessarily follows that there are 21 million unhappy listeners. While a sleeping person breathes, either in or out, several structures in his nose and throat generate the snoring. The sounds, coming from the soft palate and other soft structures of the throat, are caused by vibratory responses to inflowing and outflowing air. When the soft tissues of the mouth and throat come close to the lining of the throat, the vibrations that occur are caused by the position of the tongue. In short, the noise made by snoring can be compared to the noise when breezes flutter a flag on a pole. The frequency of the vibrations depends on the size, density, and elasticity of the affected tissues and on the force of the air flow. Although it is usually the process of in haling or exhaling through the mouth that cause snoring, short snores come from the nose of an open-mouthed sleeper. In all fairness to snorers, however, it should be emphasized that snoring is an involuntary out which stops as the offender is awakened. 请根据上面给出的内容，来回答下面的单项选择题（下列每小题备选答案中，只有一个符合题意的正确答案。每小题0分，共5题。）16. If each snorer disturbs the sleep of one other person,the number of Americans that are unfortunately subjected the sound of the snores will be _____. A ：one out of five B ：one out of eight C ：eight out of one hundred D ：one out of eighteen 请选择答案：A:B:C:D:17. The snoring is caused by _____. A ：the soft palate and other structures of the throat B ：the inflwoing and outflwoing air through the nose C ：the inflowing and outflowing air throught mouth D ：the vibrations as a result of the inflwoing and outflowing air 请选择答案：A:B:C:D:18. If a person produces short snores,most probably he has _____. A ：a soft palate B ：a big nose
英语四级阅读理解练习题及解析 【阅读练习】 What is it about Americans and food? We love to eat,but we feel 1 about it afterward. We say we want only the bes t, but we strangely enjoy junkfood. We’re 2 with health an d weight loss but face an unprecedented epidemic of obes ity(肥胖). Perhaps the 3 to this ambivalence(矛盾情 结) lies in our history. The first Europeans cameto this con tinent searching for new spices but went in vain. The first cash crop(经济作 物)wasn’t eaten but smoked. Then there was Prohibition, i ntended to prohibit drinking butactually encouraging more 4 ways of doing it. The immigrant experience, too, has been one of inharmon y. Do as Romans do meanseating what “real Americans” e at, but our nation’s food has come to be 5 by imports—piz za,say, or hot dogs. And some of the country’s most treas ured cooking comes from people whoarrived here in shack les.
英语四级阅读题库含答案解析 1.Passage One Global warming may or may not be the great environmental crisis of the 21st century, but regardless of whether it is or isn’t –we won’t do much about it. We will argue over it and may even, as a nation, make some fairly solemn-sounding commitments to avoid it. But the more dramatic and meaningful these commitments seem, the less likely they are to be observed. Al Gore calls global warming an “inconvenient truth,” as if merely recognizing it could put us on a path to a solution. But the real truth is that we don’t know enough to relieve global warming, and –without major technological breakthroughs—we can’t do much about it. From 2003 to 2050, the world’s population is projected to grow from 6.4 billion to 9.1 billion, a 42% increase. If energy use per person and technology remain the same, total energy use and greenhouse gas emissions (mainly, CO2) will be 42% higher in 2050. but that’s too low, because societies that grow richer use more energy. We need economic growth unless we condemn the world’s poor to their present poverty and freeze everyone else‘s living standards. With modest growth, energy use and greenhouse emissions more than double by 2050. No government will adopt rigid restrictions on economic growth and personal freedom (limits on electricity usage, driving and travel) that might cut back global warming. Still, politicians want to show they’re “doing something.” Consider the Kyoto Protocol (京都议定书). It allowed countries that joined to punish those that didn’t. But it hasn’t reduced CO2 emissions (up about 25% since 1990), and many signatories (签字国) didn’t adopt tough enough policies to hit their 2008-2012 targets. The practical conclusion is that if global warming is a potential disaster, the only solution is new technology. Only an aggressive research and development program might find ways of breaking dependence on fossil fuels or dealing with it. The trouble with the global warming debate is that it has become a moral problem when it’s really an engineering one. The inconvenient truth is that if we don’t solve the engineering problem, we’re helpless. 57. What is said about global warming in the first paragraph? A) It may not prove an environmental crisis at all. B) It is an issue requiring world wide commitments. C) Serious steps have been taken to avoid or stop it. D) Very little will be done to bring it under control. 58. According to the author’s understanding, what is Al Gore’s view on global warming? A) It is a reality both people and politicians are unaware of. B) It is a phenomenon that causes us many inconveniences. C) It is a problem that can be solved once it is recognized. D) It is an area we actually have little knowledge about. 59. Green house emissions will more than double by 2050 because of _______. A) economic growth B) the widening gap between the rich and poor C) wasteful use of energy D) the rapid advances of science and technology
1. When I was growing up, the whole world was Jewish. The heroes were Jewish and the villains were Jewish. The landlord, the doctor, the grocer, your best friend, the village idiot, and the neighborhood bully: all Jewish. We were working class and immigrants as well, but that just come with the territory. Essentially we were Jews on the streets of New York. We learned to be kind, cruel, and smart and feeling in a mixture of language and gesture that was part street slang, part grade-school English, part kitchen Yiddish. One Sunday evening when I was eight years old my parents and I were riding in the back seat of my rich uncle's car. We had been out for a ride and now we were back in the Bronx, headed for home. Suddenly, another car sideswiped us. My mother and aunt shrieked. My uncle swore softly. My father, in whose lap I was sitting, said out the window at the speeding car, “That's all right. Nothing but a few Jews in here.” In an instant I knew everything. I knew there was a world beyond our streets, and in that world my father was a humiliated man, without power or standing. When I was sixteen a girl in the next building had her nose straightened; we all went together to see Selma Shapiro lying in state, wrapped in bandages from which would emerge a person fit for life beyond the block. Three buildings away a boy went downtown for a job, and on his application he wrote “Anold Brown”instead of “Anold Braunowiitz.”The news swept through the neighborhood like a wild fire. A name change? What was happening here? It was awful; it was wonderful. It was frightening; it was delicious. Whatever it was, it wasn't standstill.Thing felt lively and active. Self-confidence was on the rise, passivity on the wane. We were going to experience challenges. That's what it meant to be in the new world. For the first time we could imagine ourselves out there. But whom exactly do I mean when I say we? I mean Arinie, not Selma. I mean my brother, not me. I mean the boys, not the girls. My mother stood behind me, pushing me forward. “The girls goes to college, too,” she said. And I did. But my going to college would not mean the same thing as my brother's going to college, and we all knew it. For my brother, college meant going from the Bronx to Manhattan. But for me? From the time I was fourteen I yearned to get out of the Bronx, but get out into what? I did not actually imagine myself a working person alo ne in Manhattan and nobody else did either. What I did imagine was that I would marry, and that the man I married would get me downtown. He would break the perils of class and race, and some how I'd be there alongside him. 1.In the passage, we can find the author was____.
大学英语四级阅读理解试题及答案（四） 十六 Trees shoul d only be pruned when there is a good and clear reason for doing so and , fortunately,the number of such reasons is small. Pruning involves the cutting away of obergrown and unwanted branches, and the inexperienced gardener can be encouraged by the thought that more damage results from d oing it unnecessarily than from l eaving the tree to grow in its own way. First, pruning may be d one to make sure that trees have a d esired shape or size. The object may be to get a tree of the right height, and at the same time to help the growth of small side branches which will thicken its appearance or give it a special shape. Secondly, pruning may be done to make the tree healthier. You may cut diseaed or dead wood, or branches that are rubbing against each other and thus cause wounds. The health of a tree may be encouraged by removing branches that are blocking up the centre and so preventing
PART Ⅱ READING COMPREHENSION ［25 MIN.］ In this section there are four passages followed by fifteen questions or unfinished statements, each with four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the correct answer.Mark your choice on your ANSWER SHEET. TEXT A As many as one thousand years ago in the Southwest, the Hopi and Zuni Indians of North America were building with adobe－sun baked brick plastered with mud. Their homes looked remarkably like modern apartment houses. Some were four stories high and contained quarters for perhaps a thousand people, along with storerooms for grain and other goods. These buildings were usually put up against cliffs, both to make construction easier and for defense against enemies. They were really villages in themselves, as later Spanish explorers must have realized since they called them “pueblos”, which is Spanish for town.The people of the pueblos raised what are called “the three sisters”—corn, beans, and squash. They made excellent pottery and wove marvelous baskets, some so fine that they could hold water. The Southwest has always been a dry country, where water is scarce. The Hopi and Zuni brought water from streams to their fields and gardens through irrigation ditches. Water was so important that it played a major role in their religion. They developed elaborate ceremonies and religious rituals to bring rain. The way of life of less settled groups was simpler and more strongly influenced by nature. Small tribes such as the Shoshone and Ute wandered the dry and mountainous lands between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. They gathered seeds and hunted small animals such as small rabbits and snakes. In the Far North the ancestors of today’s Inuit hunted seals, walruses, and the great whales. They lived right on the frozen seas in shelters called igloos built of blocks of packed snow. When summer came, they fished for salmon and hunted the lordly caribou. The Cheyenne, Pawnee, and Sioux tribes, known as the Plains Indians, lived on the grasslands between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River. They hunted bison, commonly called the buffalo. Its meat was the chief food of these tribes, and its hide was used to make their clothing and covering of their tents and tipis. 16. What does the passage mainly discuss? A. The architecture of early American Indian buildings. B. The movement of American Indians across North America. C. Ceremonies and rituals of American Indians. D. The way of life of American Indian tribes in early North America. 17. It can be inferred from the passage that the dwellings of the Hopi and Zuni were ___ A. very small B. highly advanced C. difficult to defend D. quickly constructed TEXT B Most earthquakes occur within the upper 15 miles of the earth’s surface. But earthquakes can and do occur at all depths to about 460 miles. Their number decreases as the depth increases. At about 460 miles one earthquake occurs only every few years. Near the surface earthquakes may run as high as 100 in a month, but the yearly average does not vary much. In comparison with the total number of earthquakes each year, the number of disastrous earthquakes is very small.[JP] The extent of the disaster in an earthquake depends on many factors. If you carefully build a toy house with an erect set, it will still stand no matter how much you shake the table. But if you build a toy house with a pack of cards, a slight shake of the table will make it fall. An earthquake in Agadir, Morocco, was not strong enough to be recorded on distant instruments, but it completely destroyed the city. Many stronger earthquakes have done
大学英语四级阅读理解（1）We find that bright children are rarely held back by mixed-ability teaching. On the contrary, both their knowledge and experience are enriched. We feel that there are many disadvantages in streaming(把......按能力分班) pupils. It does not take into account the fact that children develop at different rates. It can have a bad effect on both the bright and the not-so-bright child. After all, it can be quite discouraging to be at the bottom of the top grade! Besides, it is rather unreal to grade people just according to their intellectual ability. This is only one aspect of their total personality. We are concerned to develop the abilities of all our pupils to the full, not just their academic ability. We also value personal qualities and social skills, and we find that mixed-ability teaching contributes to all these aspects of learning. In our classrooms, we work in various ways. The pupils often work in groups: this gives them the opportunity to learn to co-operate, to share, and to develop leadership skills. They also learn how to cope with personal problems as well as learning how to think, to make decisions, to analyse and evaluate, and to communicate effectively. The pupils learn from each other as well as from the teacher. Sometimes the pupils work in pairs; sometimes they work on individual tasks and assignments, and they can do this at their own speed. They also have some formal class teaching when this is appropriate. We encourage our pupils to use the library, and we teach them the skills they need in order to do this efficiently. An advanced pupil can do advanced work: it does not matter what age the child is. We expect our pupils to do their best, not their least, and we give them every
英语四级阅读试题及答案详解1 Reading is thought to be a kind of conversation between the reader and the text. The reader puts questions, as it were, to the text and gets answers. In the light of these he puts __1__ questions, and so on. For most of the time this “conversation” goes on below the level of consciousness. At times, however, we become __2__ of it. This is usually when we are running into difficulties, when mismatch is occurring between __3__ and meaning. When successful matching is being experienced, our question of the text continues at the unconscious level. Different people __4__ with the text differently. Some stay very close to the words on the page, others take off imaginatively from the words, interpreting, criticizing, analyzing and examining. The former represents a kind of comprehension which is __5__ in the text. The latter represents __6__ levels of comprehension. The balance between these is important, especially for advanced readers. There is another conversation which from our point of view is __7__ important, and that is to do not with what is read but with how it is read. We call this a “process” conversation as __8__ to a “content” conversation. It is concerned not with meaning but with the __9__ we employ in reading. If we are an advanced reader our ability to hold a
大学英语四级阅读理解试题40篇之一（含答案） There are three kinds of goals: short-term,medium-range and long-term goals. Short-range goals are those that usually deal with current activities,which we can apply on a daily basis.Such goals can be achieved in a week or less,or two weeks,or possible months.It should be remembered that just as a building is no stronger than its foundation ,out long-term goals cannot amount to very munch without the achievement of solid short-term goals.Upon completing our short-term goals,we should date the occasion and then add new short-term goals that will build on those that have been completed. The intermediate goals bukld on the foundation of the short-range goals.They might deal with just one term of school or the entire school year,or they could even extend for several years.Any time you move a step at a time,you should never allow yourself to become discouraged or overwhelmed. As you complete each step,you will enforce the belief in your ability to grow adn succeed.And as your list of completion dates grow,your motivation and desire will increase. Long-range goals may be related to our dreams of the future. They might cover five years or more. Life is not a static thing.We should never allow a long-term goal to limit us or our course of action. 1.Our long-term goals mean a lot______. A.if we complete our short-range goals B.if we cannot reach solid short-term goals C.if we write down the dates D.if we put forward some plans 2.New short-term goals are bulid upon______. A.two years B.long-term goals C.current activities D.the goals that have been completed 3.When we complete each step of our goals ,______. A.we will win final success B.we are overwhelmed C.we should build up confidence of success D.we should strong desire for setting new goals 4.Once our goals are drawn up,_______. A.we should stick to them until we complete them B.we may change our goals as we have new ideas and opportunities C.we had better wait for the exciting news of success D.we have made great decision 5.It is implied but not stated in the passage that ______. A.those who habe long-term goals will succeed B.writing down the dates may discourage you C.the goal is only a guide for us to reach our desination D.every should have a goal 答案：adcbc 大学英语四级阅读理解试题40篇之二（含答案） The economy of the United states after 1952 was the econnomy of a well-fed,almost fully employed people. Despit occasional alarms, the country escaped any postwar depression and lived in a state of boom. A n economic survey of the year 1955, a typical year of the 1950’s, may be